Artis Black Elite Collection

September 10, 2019

2 minute read

[productsample/affiliate] Every time my sensible self has a stern word about not needing to spend a fortune on make-up brushes when there are really good tools available (Real Techniques, for example) that are priced not to make your credit card cry, I get a new drop from Artis and forget everything I told myself.

Artis Black Elite Collection

I guess it’s an appreciation of the thought that’s gone into the production of these – it’s a re-engineering of traditional shapes and the way they mimic the feel of a finger stroke so you can be more intuitive about application. They’re incredibly densely fibred (synthetic) with 250,000 contained in the Oval 10 for example which gives them a cushiony, cashmere-like feel which is probably (at least) ten times more individual fibres than any similar variants.

Artis Black Elite Collection

I don’t often use the eye brushes, but the larger ovals are in regular use for blush, highlighter and foundation. I got my first Artis brushes about 3 or 4 years ago (perhaps longer) and I still have them and they’re still in immaculate condition. Of course I’ve experimented with the cheap and cheerful ones – almost all (bar MAC) have snapped at the neck. That’s more likely to happen the more you apply pressure, so the eye brushes are far less likely to snap no matter where you get them from when you compare the way you use them to the base or blush brush. One of the things – to get really brush geeky for a second – that’s important is having a consistent quality of filament through the entire brush to keep their shape true (mine have never changed shape) and another is having handles that have a yielding movement as you apply which somehow makes it all feel more tactile and sensory. There’s no life time guarantee on these but you probably would have them literally forever. This set launches at Net-A-Porter – which is exactly the right place for them – for £110 at the end of September. If you don’t want a level of re-learning, I’d opt for the Oval 6 (£60) over any of the linear brushes because it’s so intuitive and you can use it for everything. If you don’t want to wait, the Fluenta Oval 6 is HERE.